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Terrorism

Ebola, ISIS, school shootings. Michael Brown and Eric Garner, Ukraine and Russia, Israel and Hamas. It’s been a bad year for many.

Nonetheless, life slowly gets better for most of us.

I’ll just make a passing remark about the US economy. Even in times of recession Americans have a quality of life that is better than that of kings 100 years ago, so the improving US economy and record highs for the Dow are just blips in the big picture.

The Ebola outbreak was tragic. Nonetheless, there were positive glimmers, especially Nigeria’s coordinated response. And overblown fears of a pandemic proved ludicrous.

People bemoan the state of Palestine-Israel relations, but few see recent times in the larger historical context. Before Camp David there were major wars in ’48, ’56, ’67 and ’73. Since then there have been missiles and terrorists, incursions and intifadas, but no all-out wars. The conflict seems intractable, but its scope continues to shrink.

Russia, such a nuisance through much of 2014, now seems a paper bear with gas prices and the Rouble tumbling.

The opening of Cuba bodes well. Communism, like mold, thrives in closed spaces. The feeble Castros can only hold on for so long.

ISIS’s luck is running out, especial as air strikes continue to weaken its infrastructure and the Iraq government shows some modicum of competence post-Maliki.

Tragedy will continue in Syria, and Venezuela looks ripe for some kind of change.

Despite cops and black men being unjustly shot, America and the world are actually getting safer. And richer, freer, more equal, more democratic, more literate, longer lived, better educated and healthier.

Despite what the incessant barrage of bad news may portray, war, civil wars, armed conflicts, murder and violent crime are down nearly everywhere. Terrorism is less deadly today than it was before 9/11. There has been a recent uptick in war-related violence, because of Syria and ISIS, but these numbers don’t come close to negating the gains since WWII and, especially, the 90s and aughties.

I can only hope that Dempsey, Clapper and McCain were exaggerating for political effect. My deeper fear is that these men really do think we live in more dangerous times. If they don’t understand the forces that have caused this historically unprecedented peace–Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature gives an excellent explanation of the causes–then will they not build on this success?

Our leaders must understand reality–and our reality looks very good in many ways–but statements from Dempsey, Clapper and McCain make me fear for our gains and progress.

Two stories have dominated the news in the last 48 hours, one tragic, the other pathetic.

The tragedy is of course the massacre of more than a hundred children in a Pakistan school. This, though a new low for the Pakistani Taliban, is not novel. Only the scale shocks anew.

The pathetic one centers on The Interview, Sony’s action comedy movie that just got scrapped because of threats from North Korea’s crypto-anachro Communist state.

What can anyone say to fully describe the deep misanthropy of the Taliban? Kill hundreds of children as a matter of policy?

And how insecure can Kim Jong-un be if he’s worried about a Seth Rogan adventure comedy?

The slimmest of silver linings in all of this Tarantino-meets-Kubrick surrealism is that “this is the enemy.” It is utterly awful that the Pakistani Taliban murder hundreds of children every year. And North Korean hacking and terrorism threats are small potatoes compared with what Kim Jong-un and his minions do to North Koreans.

It is nonetheless clear that “this is not a winning policy.” There will be no groundswell of support in the wake of these actions. Communism and fascism had more appeal; one promised equity and the other unity. The Taliban and the North Korean government offer nothing. We know that they are doomed. The scary question is “How many innocents will die before they’re done?”